Google embarrassed by fake adblocker that served ads

Google just can’t seem to shake the problem of malicious Chrome extensions that find their way past its security checks and onto its Web Store.

The latest example should have been easy to spot as it was masquerading as the popular Adblock Plus adblocker, the legitimate version of which has been downloaded over 100 million times.

Or perhaps not: borrowing an almost identical name to the genuine extension (the capitalised B in “block” being a small difference), only users who studied the application pane and string of negative user reviews might have twigged that something wasn’t right.

By the time it was reported by anonymous Twitter user @SwiftOnSecurity on October 9, the fake extension had been on the Chrome Store for weeks during which it had been downloaded 37,000 times.